Group Sessions

We were stupid I knew that much, getting married in the heat of anger like that. After six months married, I still hadn’t found myself regretting it just yet. I was addicted to the rush of Kevin’s reckless behavior and I couldn’t stop myself from feeding into it. A part of me felt like he was my hero, he saved me from that hell I had called home. He saved me from seeing and making my parents miserable just by existing. He saved me from all of those classes and best of all, no more night classes at the college. That’s place was second only to my parent’s house in making my life miserable in every way. I saw Kevin as some kind of screwed up Saint. I felt marrying him was the best decision I had ever made. I also know now that it was the most rash and foolish decision I have ever made. Not to say that I regret the decision now either. I can never regret Kevin, even though a part of me wants to so badly. It’s just; I wish our marriage would have saved us, not made us worse.

I was just finished with painting our room a soft blue when Kevin got home from his night shift. He was drunker than usual, and he was stumbling due to a huge lose of balance. I tried to be disgusted with him but a part of me just pitied him. I closed the door behind my drunken husband and sighed as he sang drunkenly. He kept saying that he loved me dearly as I helped him walked to bed. I stripped his clothes which were noxious with the fumes of booze and threw the covers over him before leaving the room. It was the moments like these when I began to feel very lonely like I was living home alone. At least twice a week Kevin would come home some form for inebriated. It usually wasn’t this bad but most times it as bad enough that he would pass out as soon as he got home. I made myself a pot of coffee and sat at the dining room table, frowning to myself. I knew he loved booze when I met him that’s not what bothered me, it was the amounts of intake that did. I sat like that for a while until the silence started to get to me.

I moved to the living room and put on some late night TV. As the late night talk show host went on about some actor’s underwear, I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up the next morning Kevin was standing over me with an unhappy look on his face. I knew what he was going to say before he said it. Kevin hated it when I didn’t sleep in the bed with him, and I hated it when I couldn’t have a coherent conversation with him. So I guess he and I were even. I sat up and looked at him through blurry eyes, hoping that he wouldn’t bring it up this morning. I knew that one of these days that this discussion would lead to a heated argument. That s something I so desperately wanted to avoid. So I gave him a warm smile and kissed his lips, choking on the taste of booze and bile.

“You should have warned me.” I all but gagged I headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

“Sorry babe, I didn’t know you would kiss me. I thought you were upset with me about last night.” He followed after me, his footsteps heavy as we walked towards the bathroom.

I brushed my teeth and Kevin joined me, doing the same. We silently stood side by side brushing our teeth. He smiled through paste form and started to make silly faces. I felt my anger from the night before ebb rapidly. I started to laugh at him with my tooth brush in my mouth. This of course made him laugh too. So there we stood, tooth brushes clutched in our mouths laughing like crazy. By the time we got a hold of ourselves I couldn’t remember why I had been mad at him in the first place. We finished washing up and he made me my favorite breakfast. He put a candle in my pancakes to celebrate that he met me ten months ago today. I ate my pancakes with chocolate syrup, confetti sugar and whip cream. I drank French vanilla coffee, and watched as my husband cooked himself pancakes. He was humming and shaking his butt to the music in his head. He was in such a good mood; it was a rare day for him.

“I have today off baby. We can do anything you would like to do.” He turned towards me briefly giving me a smile.

“Sounds great babe,” I gave him a big smile and went through the list of things I needed to do in my head. “I say a quick walk in the park, then pick up a few things we need from the grocery store. We can end the day watching Netflix or spazzing out to some music.” He gave me a big smile and nodded.

The day was as perfect as I thought it would be. People no longer stared at us because we were a married couple, and we got everything we needed to done. We spent the night head banging to some awesome bands then we snuggled up to watch some indie films. When Kevin got tired of cheesy plot lines, and the occasional good acting, we moved on to watching cartoons. He even let me stayed cuddled against him which he usually didn’t let me do for long periods of time. As an added bonus I got a call from the small dentist office in town that I got the job as a part time receptionist. Kevin and I celebrated by dancing on our dining room table in our underwear. Tonight I did sleep by his side, a smile on my face, pleased at the man I had chosen to be my husband. Life was looking up for us. Of course the highlight of today was that for the first time in seven months we didn’t self-harm and Kevin didn’t drink.